Since Aug. 29, 2005, we have told the stories of dozens of our readers as they struggle to rebuild their lives. As the second anniversary of the great flood approaches, we turned to our staff members for reflections on their own recoveries. Our stories are no different from many of yours. Some of us had a foot or two of water. Others were wiped out completely. One of us was devastated by a tornado, just as flood reconstruction was nearing completion. Like so many of you, we have learned much, and we hope you will find much familiar in our stories of perseverance, resilience and an abiding love of home.

Seeking higher ground

Features editor James O'Byrne and his wife, Cathy, got 8 feet of water in their Lakeview home. They sold the house, which was later demolished, and now live in the University area Uptown.

I remember the exact moment when I understood how important it was for my sons to have a place to call home again.

It happened on the afternoon of Aug. 21, 2006, 357 days after Hurricane Katrina struck, the walls fell down and everything that they knew -- home, school, neighborhood, community -- was washed away.

My wife, Cathy, and I had moved into our modest single-story bungalow on Louisville Street in Lakeview 14 years before the storm, just before the birth of our second son, Brendan. For him and his older brother, Colin, it was the only house they had ever known, and over the years we filled it with the thousands of memories that turned it into a home.

On that day last August, while our kids were in school, Cathy and I watched while one of those now-familiar contraptions -- the ones with the big steel arms that look like the novelty claw machines in old New Orleans restaurants -- reduced our home to rubble.

Later that day, Cathy picked up the kids while I waited. They had both told us -- in that teenage boy way, like it was no big deal -- that they wanted to come by after school and see what was left.

When Colin, 16, and Brendan, 14, stepped out of the car and beheld the pile, neither said a word. But their eyes filled with tears, and suddenly, written on their faces in a way they could never put into words, was all of the pain and the loss and the sorrow of Hurricane Katrina. For parents of Katrina kids, it was an indelible moment.

Within weeks, we started looking for a new house.

Now, I say we watched "our home" get torn down, but the truth is that, months earlier, we had sold the lot to a Lakeview developer. The flood forced upon thousands of people a cruel calculus that determined whether they had to stay or go, rebuild or regroup. For us, the wheel of misfortune stopped on "sell."

For nearly a year, we had lived in the suburbs in a rented house. We knew we were luckier by a long shot than tens of thousands of others. But driving out of the city each evening had all the hallmarks of a forced march.

Just before last Christmas, we moved into our new house , a 1925 Craftsman cottage in the University neighborhood of the city; we live, like many in this city, uncomfortably close to the financial line, while we wait to see if this year's property tax bill or this year's Citizen's insurance bill is the one that finally does us in.

Leaving Lakeview was difficult. We still have courageous and resilient friends who are rebuilding there. They try hard when we see them to hide their vague sense of betrayal. But the truth is that the flood took the neighborhood we fell in love with, and the day of our sons' departure to college was too close for us to wait for it to come back.

We're still getting to know this younger, funkier neighborhood. And we are slowly falling in love with our new house, too, although that's not as easy as it should be.

Maybe it's the effort required to recover from the shock of losing everything. Maybe we need the house to make it through its first hurricane season. Or maybe, we just haven't made enough memories yet.

But we're working on it.

Last weekend, Colin turned 18. He and a big group of friends spent most of the evening in the basement game room -- a post-K extravagance -- playing music and video games and pingpong and making way too much noise.

At one point, his friends insisted on coming upstairs and, in plain view of his parents (the horror!), they sang "Happy Birthday" and wolfed down cake and ice cream.

It was a simple moment, full of joy and laughter. Colin was suitably embarrassed. His parents were suitably touched.

It felt like home.

-- JAMES O'BYRNE

jobyrne@timespicayune.com

The home stretch

Living section assistant editor Mary Lou Atkinson and her husband, Rick, have lived in their raised cottage in Broadmoor for three decades. The house flooded to the windowsills.

If we aren't back in our house by the end of the month, blame the nutria.

That would be the nutria in the Louisiana Swamp exhibit at Audubon Zoo that bit the hand that feeds it -- specifically, my husband's hand, my husband being the exhibit curator who was weighing the rodent -- in mid-July. At the time, we were making steady weekend progress on our Broadmoor home, nearing the day that there would be shelves in all the closets, paint on the kitchen cabinets, bookcases in the hall and rugs on the newly refinished floors.

"It's not as bad as it looks, " my husband said, holding up a hand encased in a bandage the size of Cleveland. "Just a few stitches."

Indeed, the injury slowed him down a bit, but it didn't stop him. He's just as eager as I am to be back in our house, our home for 30 years, which we watched -- from the upstairs of a neighbor's house across the street -- fill to the windowsills with floodwater in the days after Katrina, almost two whole years ago.

Why it has taken so long for our triumphant return to Broadmoor is a story for another day. If I ever write a book about it, chapter titles will include "I Cried a River Waiting for the Plumber to Call Back, " "The Day the Electrician Short-Circuited" and "I Don't Want to Be Inspired by Nature's Palette, Just Sell Me Some Plain White House Paint."

The point of this story is to share lessons I learned while having my home put back together. I learned a lot, all sorts of things, but there's one lesson that far surpasses the rest, and it's this: The very worst brings out the very best in most people. I could not have survived any of this without the support, sympathy and incredible generosity of friends, relatives, friends and relatives of friends and relatives, co-workers, fellow journalists and zookeepers and, in some cases, complete strangers. And I hope I am a better person for it, that in another situation, I would not hesitate to be the one who reaches out a helping hand.

In the meantime, if you're interested in renting a really nice half-double on Annunciation Street, I know one that should be available starting Sept. 1.

-- MARY LOU ATKINSON

matkinson@timespicayune.com

Design advice speeds recovery

Food editor Judy Walker and her husband, TV columnist Dave Walker, moved from Phoenix (annual rainfall, 7 inches) in 2000 and bought a two-story converted double in the Fontainebleau area. Their street had 4 feet of water after Katrina.

When it was time to make the hundreds of design decisions about refurbishing our new downstairs, experience and trust helped. Drawing on the experience of others, and trusting their judgment, made our process infinitely smoother.

One of the first things we did was to seek professional help. After the contractor, we hired a decorator for advice on the basics. The first time that interior designer Shawn O'Brien walked through our empty downstairs, she made excellent suggestions that would have never dawned on us.

What we spent to get her expertise was offset by the times she talked me out of bad decisions. Although we didn't see eye-to-eye on everything, we communicated well, and her advice on colors, fabrics, finishes, places to shop and specialists to hire was invaluable.

I also took advantage of another resource: the remodeling experiences of foodie friends. My best friend and cookbook co-author in Phoenix loves her manufactured quartz countertops. Taking her advice, I didn't have to agonize over granite, stainless steel, concrete, Corian or Formica. I just picked out the Silestone that best matched our cabinets. And the faucet for the kitchen sink is the exact one that a food editor friend in Palm Beach, Fla., chose for her kitchen.

Nothing, however, is more exciting than shopping for light fixtures. When we remodeled another kitchen more than a decade ago, I found molded white glass hanging globes, originally from a candy shop, at an antique store near my parents' house in Oklahoma. They were one of my favorite things in that kitchen.

Guess what? The store owner in Oklahoma still had some. They look great above my new Silestone-topped island. They represent the Walker kitchens of the past, present and future, as well as the trials that we have survived and turned into something beautiful -- by trusting ourselves and our friends.

-- JUDY WALKER

jwalker@timespicayune.com

The kindness of friends and strangers

Arts and Entertainment editor Ann Maloney and her husband, Night Metro editor Colley Charpentier, moved into their Claiborne/University area brick, split-level house in March 2005. Due to the levee breaks, about 5 feet of water filled their ground-floor den, with about 3 feet in the kitchen and living and dining rooms. On May 23, 2007, they completed the major repairs and moved back in.

My grandfather used to sing a little ditty made famous by Jimmy Durante that went something like this: Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, and still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?

When we paddled a pirogue to our house on Vendome Place on Sept. 10, 2005, I definitely had the feeling that I wanted to go.

In the two years that followed, that song became my silent mantra as we gutted and rebuilt the lower two floors of our split-level home. A fierce feeling of wanting to beat back the despair and reclaim our place ran up against an unbelievable longing to hop in my red Honda and high-tail it outta here.

The battling emotions could wash over me within the same half-hour as we met with adjusters, accountants, carpenters and electricians.

My husband, Colley Charpentier, hails from Cut Off, and he and his family have that Cajun can-do spirit. For him, the flood was an opponent that would be vanquished. He saw working shoulder-to-shoulder with his brother and father as a beautiful thing.

To me accepting such help was a sign of failure because it meant I couldn't get through this with just my brawn, wits and determination.

But we had no choice: The two of us, along with almost a dozen of my flooded-out relatives, moved in with my brother and his wife for months. Then, Colley and I lived in make-shift accommodations, combining the upstairs of our house and a FEMA trailer in the driveway for many more months. Family sanded and painted, and friends listened with empathy to tales of setbacks, dropped off casseroles and oohed and aahed at progress.

As the Sheetrock was floated and I picked out the colors, decided on the tiles, switches, railings and doors, I underwent my own metamorphosis.

The anger and self-pity that too often visited gave way to gratitude. I was grateful for practical things such as being able to afford French doors that gave my den that New Orleans look I'd always wanted.

More importantly, I was grateful that I could grow wiser and realize that there is no joy in going it alone. The joy comes in grasping the hands of family and friends and letting them steady you -- just as you hold fast to them when they need it.

And, as I have so often in the past two years, I find my life is a microcosm of my city's overall experience. We recently reported that more than 1 million people have volunteered more than 14 million hours in our city since the storm. That number is so very low because it does not count people like my family and friends still working in houses throughout the area.

We have a long way to go, but I cannot fathom where we'd all be without kind strangers and loving family and friends.

One old friend told me as she looked at the carefully cut Sheetrock and smooth walls going up in my home: "You can tell someone who loves you did this work."

That's too true -- in my home and in my city.

-- ANN MALONEY

amaloney@timespicayune.com

Better the second time around

Assistant InsideOut editor Stephanie Stokes and her husband, Managing Editor/News Dan Shea, have lived in their Old Metairie camelback cottage since 1998. The raised house was spared in the May 1995 flood, but was caught in the waters from the Orleans levee breaches after Katrina. They moved in upstairs, and in the FEMA trailer in the driveway, after Christmas 2005.

It was tempting to just tear down the soggy, moldy mess of our house and start over. Instead, we decided to rebuild -- but rebuild better, investing in the house and in our neighborhood.

Our 1940s-era cottage with a deep front porch had already gone through at least two renovations, which added rooms in the rear and a camelback. Our Realtor called it "a family house" -- a kind way of saying "roomy but nothing fancy."

Sixteen inches of water meant we were on our way to renovation No. 3, a complete gutting and redo of the 2, 000-square-foot first floor, even though the final cost would go beyond our modest insurance settlement. We hired architect/designer Volume Zero, the patient and creative husband/wife team of Michael Cajski and Van Tran, to help us to re-envision our patched-together floor plan. And we were blessed with equally skilled and responsive contractors, Eddie Giddens Inc. of Shreveport.

A mishmash of smaller rooms has given way to spaces designed around how we live. The grander kitchen, French-window-lined dining room and patio are all next to one another, instead of rooms apart. The office, which had been in a too-sunny, too-hot room in the rear too close to the master bedroom, is now in a cozy "study" that can be isolated from the noisy, kid-centered rest of the house.

A new partition wall creates, on one side, a center hall that lends formality to the entrance and, on the other, a wide space in the great room against which to put the new flat-screen TV. The great room itself was carved out of the old kitchen, a too-small breakfast room and a little-used front parlor. The floors and trim are now consistent throughout the first floor. And, resolving one of my pet peeves, the laundry room is now no longer anywhere near the TV!

We reclaimed our downstairs Aug. 19, 2006. We're not the first people to describe their post-Katrina renovation as making lemonade out of a big, bitter lemon -- and I hope we won't be the last.

-- STEPHANIE STOKES

sstokes@timespicayune.com

Flooded or not, we're all survivors

InsideOut transfers editor Stephanie Stroud lived in a duplex that didn't flood, quite. But, as with all of us, the storm affected her life nevertheless.

I was one of the lucky ones, unless "survivor guilt" somehow makes me unfortunate. Let's count the ways:

I lived in a rented duplex on a block of Iberville Street where every other house took on water, but it only lapped at my front porch.

I had foolishly let my renter's insurance lapse just months before the August 2005 storm, but it didn't matter because the water from the roof leak landed only on a vinyl chaise. And when my front door somehow was left unlocked and ajar for who knows how long, no burglars took advantage of the situation. My brand new Nikes still sat on the living room floor. And everything else -- all in clear view through the front door, where the curtain had been torn by rescuers trying to determine whether any person or animal was inside -- was left untouched.

I had recently reduced the insurance on my car because it was nearly 10 years old, but I was ready to buy a new one anyway. And on a sunny day in October 2005, as my mother and I packed my lucky belongings into the bed of her pickup truck, a man working at the house across the street offered me $300 for the 1997 Honda Civic in my driveway that was still damp from the 3 to 4 feet of water that had engulfed it. I don't know if he ever got the smell of rotten cat food out of it.

After six weeks with my parents -- all the while getting a paycheck -- my employer had my workplace back in order. My neighborhood, however, was deserted and in ruins, so living in my old apartment was not an option. Besides, the roof leaked and the kitchen floor had buckled, from water that had seeped through floorboards in the back of the house.

A friend let me live with him for a year, rent-free (I helped pay the utilities). He made space for my furniture and piles of stuff, not to mention my two Chihuahuas. And he never complained.

As a displaced Katrina victim, I also qualified for 401(k) tax breaks to buy a new car and my own place, where I have been living since November. It's a small condo, but it's mine (or it will be in about 30 years), and it's on the second story, high above the 6 inches of water that flooded the Parkview street I now call home.

Because I've been so lucky, I've felt an obligation to help those who weren't. In Lakeview, Gentilly and eastern New Orleans, I've cleared out wet, muddy belongings from houses, gutted others to the studs, put in insulation, you name it.

It has helped me face my survivor guilt and made me realize that I, too, live with this storm day after day. It has helped me remain devoted to the city I've called home for 10 years -- and made me more determined than ever to stay here and help make sure we recover.

I was, and still am, one of the lucky ones.

-- STEPHANIE STROUD

sstroud@timespicayune.com

Been there, done that

InsideOut editor Renee Peck and her husband Stewart, a lawyer, have lived in their two-story contemporary brick house in East Lakeshore since 1992. The breach in the 17th Street Canal flooded the home for the first time in its 50-year history. They moved in upstairs on April 23, 2006, which happened to be election day.

At The Times-Picayune, I'm known as the mold writer.

Really. I had a guy from Washington call once and ask for me by that title. And I come by it honestly: Not only have I covered mold and every other conceivable aspect of post-K rebuilding, but I had plenty of the stuff myself. Many of you know that, if you've followed the ups and downs of my rebuilding efforts in This Mold House, a column that runs weekly in this section.

The short story: We got 8 inches of water, which might as well have been 8 feet, since we had to strip the interior bare and professionally mold-remediate the first floor, which involved running (expensive) commercial dehumidifiers 24/7. Then we added spray-foam insulation, mold-resistant Sheetrock, three coats of Benjamin Moore historic-palette paint picked by Stewart, and a new kitchen.

Along the way a tornado hit our house, peeling off two walls and three of our four white square columns. I ordered new ones over the Internet.

We have learned, like so many of you, that abnormal is the new normal. Drywall costs twice as much, carpenters say they'll show up but don't, and telephone and Internet service are iffy at best. We've lived upstairs with no water or furniture downstairs, had a squatter secretly live in our house, and still think we're probably getting only half of our mail.

We've been back in our house more than a year, are 95 percent finished with our renovation, and figure the last 5 percent will take another decade. Or more.

We've learned to count progress in our neighborhood in small but measurable ways. The corner stop sign reappeared a couple of months ago. Our friend across the street poured his new foundation last week.

We never thought that, two years later, we'd still be fighting insurance companies and waiting on plumbers and driving past residential shells. But then, neither did you. I know, because I've interviewed dozens of you, living in FEMA trailers and renovated Arts and Crafts cottages and small apartments and the homes of in-laws or friends. All of you keep me inspired.

Stay tuned.

-- RENEE PECK

rpeck@timespicayune.com

Can't go home again

Staff writer Chris Bynum had completed a renovation of her Lakeview house a year before the storm. It was inundated with 5 feet of water. She now lives happily in a rented apartment with her three dogs.

Just about every morning right before 6, you will find me perched on my pillows with a cup of dark-roast coffee. From my bed, I catch sight of the first morning light of summer. Two rooms away, the sun-filtering transom over the back door serves as my alarm clock.

Time, you see, even when it's not measured by two ticking hands or a digital read-out, designates pattern. And patterns create the familiar. And when something is familiar, it feels like home. This is what I came to realize after Katrina.

When I first moved into this apartment in October 2005 after losing my home in Lakeview, this residence belonged to someone else. I wrote a story for InsideOut about living with someone else's possessions, about having a roommate who never seemed to come home. I was living with her furniture, her art, her books, her clothes still in the closet.

But as time went by, the previous resident decided to live elsewhere, mourning her loss of New Orleans each time she came to remove a piece here and place it there, in her new home in another state. As she moved things out, I gradually moved things in.

But I was cautious and conservative. As I wrote in that July 8, 2006, article, I wanted "a simpler, less-cluttered life." Besides, I wasn't sure where or what I wanted to call home. I missed my back door that opened to the garden I had slowly built over five years' time. I missed driving up to the gate at my carport and using the remote to open the electric gate I had saved for. I missed my space and wasn't sure I wanted to live in an apartment again where my neighbor would be one wall away.

But as time went by, and I heard the woes of others who are trying to rebuild their lives, I realized I was not up for the battle they are facing. If I insured another house, would I ever want to face this battle of homeowners versus flood insurance again? Would I ever feel insured, even reassured, by insurance that cost more than ever before? Did I really want to be among those standing in line in the August sun for eight hours to protest my property-tax assessment? How would I ever furnish a house again when the contents money from my flood insurance was used to cover my mortgage? Just thinking about locking the door to a newly purchased home on the eve of another evacuation made me question the sanity of home ownership.

Yet I was restless, not yet at home where I was. And then those patterns started to reveal themselves. Every time my landlady, Peggy, made her famous macaroni and cheese with real cream and amazing cheese for her family, she made some for me. Every morning just after sunrise, as I sat on the back deck watching my dogs greet the day, I would hear my neighbor working in her art studio. She and I are the early risers on the block.

Every evening when I'd come in from a walk, the man on the porch down the street would ask me about my day. And then there was that night, when I came in after dark and a pickup truck pulled up next to me. The man asked me for directions, then asked me to repeat them, and then beckoned me closer to his truck, saying he couldn't hear me. Peggy's porch light flicked on instantly, and she stepped outside.

"Chris! Been waiting for you. Have something to show you, " she said. I started up the steps, and he drove off.

"I think that man was taking a little too long asking for directions, " she said.

Talk about a sense of home. This is the same woman who helped me put together a bed that came in a box, who does plumbing jobs at a moment's notice, and who loves my dogs (I think). She is friend, neighbor, landlady.

So I will stay in my three-room, one-bath apartment where things are beginning to feel familiar, in a place where I have all the space I need, thank you. The patterns here have shown themselves. Things have become so familiar that when I pull my car into a parking space on my street, there's another reminder that I'm home -- three enthusiastic dogs at the window who recognize the sound of my tires coming to rest on the gravel.